Galapagos Master – Deep Blue

The bucket list holiday was two years in the planning and the people and the diving really lived up and to be honest exceeded expectations. Diving with animals that showed no sign of fear and initiated engagement and interactions with us bubble blowers was a pleasure. The diving was not simple, the currents and surges meant that we spent a lot of time hanging on to rocks and being buffeted around. The amount of Gopro footage that is the camera looking down filming my hands gripping to barnacles demonstrates this.

The only downer was the boat, which was not as good as I expected when spending the amount of money we had. The boat was spacious and well equipped, the dive deck was a little tight but as everyone was diving singles there was enough room.

The boat was dated and tired in places, clearly showing signs of needing repairs,

• There were a few broken plains of glass in some of the window.
• The entertainment system would not work and we were reliant on Bluetooth speakers for music.
• The dark mahogany coloured fittings in the salons made it imposing inside.
• The bedrooms were pretty standard, with single or double beds and a separate toilet and shower room, none of the lower deck rooms had windows or port hole (the curtain was missing on one of these) that could be opened and there was no light in the shower.
• The rooms were more like a youth hostels than hotel rooms and for the price of the trip were a bit of a let-down.
• The boat also had no connectivity which in the 21^st Century is nice, but also quite isolating for ten days we truly had no idea if the world was still there or not!
• There were no cushions on the sun beds.
• Some of the soft drink ran out, thankfully the beer lasted for 10 days thought we did do some damage to the stock level.

As said before the crew were excellent and really helpful, the guides were knowledgeable and clearly passionate about the animals and the protection of the Galapagos Islands. The food was very good and a mix of European Asian cuisine, and included fresh fish daily.

During our trip the guests and several of the crew and guides were each struck down with a very unpleasant stomach bug that kept us out of the water for 24 hours. Im not sure how being in so close contact impacted on the transmutation of the bug, although the only person not struck down did not use the water fountain so that got the blame!